Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Momentum project held the 3rd eParticipation Projects Concertation Meeting in Athens, on 27th October 2009.

Joined by European Commission representative Dr. T. Chrissafis, the MOMENTUM team and representatives of more than 15 electronic participation projects in European Union, the meeting served as a forum to exchange ideas on the status and further activities of projects.

Also, the next eParticipation Conference and the presence of MOMENTUM in the oncoming eGovernment Ministerial Meeting in Malmoe, Sweden, were discussed.

The 3st International Workshop on Interoperability was held in Istanbul, in the context of 2009 eChallenges Conference, on October 22nd, chaired by Y. Charalabidis (on-site), R.Goncalves and M.Missikof (off-site), supporrted by the Greek Interoperability Centre. During the workshop titled “Interoperability Infrastructures and Standards for Administrations and Enterprises” the following presentations were made:

- “Interoperability of UN/CEFACT CCTS based Electronic Business Documents”, Asuman Dogac, Software Research and Development and Consultancy Ltd., Turkey

- “Enabling the Next Generation Interoperable and Easy to Integrate Software Products of the European SMEs with a Semantic Service-oriented Private Adaptation Layer”, Stelios Pantelopoulos, SingularLogic S.A, Greece.

The 1st International Workshop on Digital Cities was held in Istanbul, in conjunction with the 2009 eChallenges Conference, on October 21st. During the workshop titled “Digital Cities: Bringing Digital Public Services to the Local Communities”, chaired by Y. Charalabidis, T. eL Masri and G.Karaseitanidis, the following presentations were made:

- “Digital Cities for the Next Generation: Research Challenges from the Field”, Yannis Charalabidis, National Technical University Athens / ICCS, Greece

Saturday, October 10, 2009

An alarming example of the challenges of Web-based Service Portals appeared after the latest government change in Greece:
After the Sunday 4th October national elections in Greece, the new prime minister announced and performed a rapid change in the government structure, merging ministries and establishing new ones.
Although very swiftly announced as a presidential decree in the Government Gazette on the 7th October, and effective on the same date as the new ministers assumed power, the change will still need many days (or weeks) to be propagated in Governmental Portals.
As one of the hundreds of examples try the central government gateway (http://www.ermis.gov.gr/) where new and old ministries still appear in a mixed picture, on the 10th October(see picture with not existing ministries underlined in red). The situation gets more complicated when diving into the vast numbers of general secretaries and supervised organisations, maintained two and three times in different governmental portals.

The above situation is just the tip of the iceberg, in a process of changing service forms (for the more than 2,000 services and more than 10,000 governmental documents maintained in multiple sites).
Hint: Content Syndication is the answer to issues like that. As the National Interoperability Framework (http://www.e-gif.gov.gr/) indicates, information should be maintained by the owner only and automatically propagated in multiple, content “consuming” sites.

In one of the very first times for Europe and certainy for the first time in Greece, the new government announced a web-based open process for the staffing of more than 80 General Secretary positions.
Applicants are invited to submit their CV through a set of web pages, stating their education, experience, social activity an more. Built in record-time after the announcement of the new ministers, the site is an innovative step in the direction opening the selection process for chief secretaries of state.
Hint for improvement: Most of the information is entered as unstructured text, limiting the ability to screen applicants via automated tools.
Visit www.opengov.gr